Category Archives: Business

With yesterday’s announcement of the Postmedia/Torstar swap of 41 newspapers, with the intent of shutting them down, the online world was above with lamentations about the loss of community content, the unfairness of the decision, and allegations of big business and corporate greed ruling the roost.

The thing is, Instead of wringing our collective hands after the fact, maybe we should be more willing to reach into our collective wallets beforehand.

It’s been proven over and over in sports that success does not come exclusively by having the best players — it’s having the best team that wins championships. After all, even on the Dream Team not everyone could be Michael Jordan. Someone’s had to be Christian Laettner.

That rings true in all aspects of life, including business and politics. Everyone wants to be (or thinks they are) the idea person, the visionary, the leader. There’s a whole market predicated on selling motivational posters to those who want to believe that individualism matters more than collective will.

It’s true that single-mindedness and tunnel vision can lead to successfully completing a goal or project. And if you’re interested in your own needs, that’s often enough. But true success — the kind that uplifts people from across all walks of life — can only come from balance and teamwork. Continue reading →

Like this:

I opened the paper today and I was amazed at what I read. It just seemed all so familiar.

A city, reeling from mayoral scandals and political impropriety, is concerned about how it’s going to retain its youth.

A city, with plenty of aging, empty industrial land within its core, finds growth success in the suburbs. While “A louer” signs abound in depressed, historically poorer areas of the traditional core, new megaplexes and commercial centres are sprouting up to support the burgeoning suburban communities.

In the same publication, a youth advocate states that citizens must be involved in each and every decision the government makes, and suggests that what the city really needs more of is candidates under the age of 30.

It’s not enough to build it and hope they come. And while the downtown master plan is visually appealing, core proponents can’t be blind to the fact that the most important thing to see is what the consumer actually wants.

It’s great to have a pedestrian-friendly downtown, but you have to focus on marketing and give those pedestrians a reason to come. And it has to be more than supercilious castigations of what people “should” be doing; it has to be a focus on providing customers with something they want to do.

The eyes of the world will be on London in just a few short weeks — and it appears that our civic inferiority complex will be on full display.

Highlighted by a laser light show; edged with spray-painted trees, and bankrolled to the tune of $100,000, we’re going to take the opportunity to share with the figure-skating world that we are London — just not that one.